Thursday, November 05, 2009

Intentional lies

But before I get into the rant, let's clear our heads. Let's take politics out of this. Think of the headline as Government: Raises count as jobs "saved". Now when have you ever heard of someone who is going to lose their job getting a raise? You don't. If someone is going to lose their job they will have to take a pay cut in order to keep it. So for this clown at the Department of Health and Human Services, Luis Rosero, to try and tell you that "If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job," he is not just being dishonest, he is being insulting.

There is another clown that tries the argument that by giving them a raise, you could interpret it as "saving" a job because you are retaining staff. No you are not. A job and the person performing the job are two different things. If the person decides to leave their job because they want more money, the job itself does not disappear. There are more than 15 million people unemployed. I am sure one of them would take the job. Job does not equal worker. Thus it is not a job saved.

But why is this money being used to give people who have existing jobs, more money? As they point out at Hot Air, why isn't it being where it could actually create a new job? Last year the government had a shit fit when institutions that took TARP money wanted to reward employees for doing a good job. They insisted taxpayer money should not be given as rewards to employees. Isn't this the same thing?

It doesn't matter what party is in office. Cooking the numbers to make your failed program appear as it is succeeding is dishonest. Sadly, they all do it. In this case they create a formula to intentionally make the numbers bigger. They take the number of people receiving a raise and multiply it by the percentage pay raise they received. Thus it shouldn't be a shock when you hear some agency report 100 jobs "saved" when they have only 90 employees. That is exactly what the schools reported in Illinois. Just flat out lying now.

Furthermore, 3.4 million jobs have been lost since the "stimulus" plan was passed. That is more than would have been lost had the government done nothing. Their numbers, not mine. They need to stop making claims that they cannot back up. Every time they use the stupid phrase "job saved or created" they embarrass themselves. The amount of money spent per job "saved or created" ranges from $70k to $160k depending on the numbers the government chooses to try and lie about.

Today's Milwaukee Journal targets the State of Wisconsin and the numbers they reported. Again, more inflated numbers for jobs that do not exist in the first place. But they find someone to go the next step. They tout even more phantom jobs that are affected by the stimulus. So called "indirect" and "induced" jobs that they will want to have counted. So the person who is say working construction on the street spends money at the diner for lunch. Now they want to count the waitress, the cook, the cleaning person, the delivery man, the truck manufacturer, the gasoline attendant, the refiner and the oil driller as jobs that have been saved. Hell why not? They are making everything else up. Why not go all the way to the top and claim the CEO of Exxon Mobil has had his job saved because of the stimulus?

Let's throw the politics back in now. People on the right are nodding their heads because they know a scam when they see one. I hope any readers on the left are as disgusted with what they administration is trying to pull here as well. Because you on the left are the ones who are being directly insulted. The Obama administration thinks you are sheep that will buy in to these numbers and go door to door proclaiming his brilliance. They think you won't dig in to see where these numbers are coming from and discover the falsehoods.

It all comes down to the same thing. You wanted "change". You wanted a government that would be straight forward and transparent. You are not getting what you voted for. Instead you are being fed intentional lies. You got fooled.